Just thought we should flag this one while Dick Cheney is still around (and while Obama is still in office).

According to Business Week, the former CEO of Halliburton will soon be wanted for arrest on bribery charges by Nigeria, with whom the U.S. has a long-standing extradition treaty. As well, they may also be asking Interpol, whom the U.S. is supposed to be cooperating with, to help in seeking Cheney's arrest. All of this at a time when Rightwingers (and some non-Rightwingers) are calling on Interpol to arrest WikiLeaks' Julian Assange for...something or other.

All of which may put the U.S. in "a very awkward position", according to Georgetown University's Constitutional Law professor Jonathan Turley, who discussed that --- and the Obama Administration's collusion with Republicans to protect the Bush Administration from torture charges in Spain, as we've now learned from recently released WikiLeaks cables --- on MSNBC last night...

I'm loath to even spend time on this jerk, particularly as I'm busy working on a couple of deadlines about things and people that actually matter. But I've got to take just a moment to flag the details on the latest victim of convicted federal criminal and Rightwing creep James O'Keefe and his employer/pimp/propagandist Andrew Breitbart. See Bob Braun's column at yesterday's Star-Ledger for the full details, but in short, the latest victim of the continuing O'Keefe/Breitbart assault on decency in this nation was a New Jersey special education teacher named Alissa Ploshnick.

In 1997 Ploshnick was lauded by President Clinton after risking her life to save those of a dozen school kids in Passaic where "She threw herself in front of a careening van to protect her students and landed in the hospital with broken ribs, a fractured wrist, a badly bruised pelvis and glass cuts in her eyes."

As Braun notes, "She could have died." This year, however, she was lured into another deceptively edited, hidden video "exposé" created by the criminal and serial liar O'Keefe...

It took nearly a week of The BRAD BLOG bitching, moaning, emailing, complaining, and tweeting to the Washington Post, its ombudsman, and, of course, the author of the story, Alexandra Petri, who had blatantly misreported, twice in the same article at Dana Milbank's "Rough Sketch" blog, the long-ago debunked myth that Rightwing con-man and dirty trickster James O'Keefe had "dressed up as a pimp to interview members of ACORN" in his scam video tapes that shamefully took down the four-decade old anti-poverty, pro-democracy organization based on his hateful hoax.

As we detailed in our original report on Petri's inaccuracy last week, O'Keefe never dressed as a pimp and never even represented himself as a pimp in the offices of ACORN. The truth about all of that had been publicly available to know for almost a year before Petri misreported on it in the pages of the Washington Post last week.

Given that the Washington Post published another related story over a year ago with a number of similarly misleading inaccuracies in it, which they have yet to correct even after all this time, perhaps we should be happy it took less than a week this time around for the right thing to be done at the paper.

Petri has finally, nearly a week later, corrected her article, as she notes in the following email sent to us this morning...

It was a "punk" set-up by James O'Keefe, the same guy who famously dressed up as a pimp to interview members of ACORN...
...
Remember, he dressed up as a pimp to interview members of ACORN.

For chrissakes, you're the WASHINGTON POST! Get the story straight please!

O'Keefe NEVER "dressed up as a pimp to interview members of ACORN." Never. Not once. Ever. It was a hoax. Period. Just like his criminal operation at Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in New Orleans (for which he is still on probation), and the CNN sexual assault/wiretap scheme.

How many times are you guys gonna fall for it and keep misreporting the same damaging, inaccurate story?

For example, here's former MA Attorney General Scott Harshbarger's report [PDF] from December of 2009:

Although Mr. O'Keefe appeared in all videos dressed as a pimp, in fact, when he appeared at each and every office, he was dressed like a college student - in slacks and a button down shirt.

For the record, when you issue your swift correction (which I hope you'll do immediately and transparently and loudly), before you make yet another mistake, as the NYTimes did when issuing theirs, O'Keefe also did not "represent himself as a pimp" to ACORN workers either. He represented himself as the boyfriend of the girl/prostitute (played by Hannah Giles) trying to save her FROM an abusive pimp who was trying to kill her.

Jesus. It's not the first time WaPo has misreported on this matter. But we figured they'd have figured out the scam by now. Apparently not.

Please issue a correction immediately. Thank you. And good lord. (This is how James O'Keefe, Andrew Breitbart, and the rest of their crew get away with lying again and again and again. Incredible.)

P.S. If you want to report on the story --- in your own MD backyard, Washington Post --- why don't you cover the fact that O'Keefe has now violated Maryland's Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act again and again (and now, likely, the terms of his federal criminal probation), as we laid out yesterday, and the fact that MD law enforcement officials seem to be doing absolutely nothing about it?!

* * *

UPDATE 10/1/10, 12:50pm PT: It has been nearly 48 hours since the Petri/Milbank story was posted containing the egregious mistakes noted above, and yet there has still be no correction. Over the past 24 hours we've notified both @Milbank & @Petridishes via Twitter multiple times; have notified WaPo's "Corrections" address (Corrections@WashPost.com); and have notified their Ombudsman Andy Alexander who has responded with Alexandra Petri's email address so we could contact her that way directly, which we have. And yet, still no correction for the blatantly innaccurate reporting.

During those same 24 hours, Milbank has posted one item, and Petri has posted two --- one as recently as two hours ago, another a few hours earlier than that today --- so we know they are both around to make the corrections. They have apparently chosen to not correct their inaccurate reporting.

Next time you are told how the "professionals in the MSM fact-check their work, but bloggers don't," please feel free to keep this incident handy.

UPDATE 10/1/10, 3:46pm PT: Incredible. Petri has just posted yet a third item on Milbank's blog without bothering to correct the O'Keefe "pimp" story. I've left a comment on every one of her blog items since, pointing back to this article and asking her what gives and if she ever intends to correct her blatant inaccuracies. Hope you'll consider doing same until she accurately and transparently corrects the story. Milbank's blog is here.

UPDATE 10/3/10, 11:36am PT: It has now been four days since Dana Milbank allowed Alexandra Petri's complete inaccuracies about Rightwing con-man James O'Keefe and ACORN to be posted on his WaPo blog without correction. The paper's corrections editor, their ombudsman and both Milbank and Petri have been notified many times. They continue to appear not to give a damn that they are blatantly misinforming their readers and the nation.

UPDATE 10/5/10:SUCCESS! After nearly a week of prodding, Petri has finally issued a correction! Though even older WaPo misreports, by other journalists, on this same matter, are still unaddressed. Full details now posted here...

Convicted federal criminal and Rightwing dirty-trickster James O'Keefe appears to have flagrantly run afoul of the rule of law yet again. This time, he appears to have violated and/or conspired to violate Maryland's Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act. It would not be the first instance of him having done so.

The apparent violation(s) of state felony laws, revealed today as part of what is being reported as O'Keefe's "botched" attempt to "punk CNN", comes on the heels of O'Keefe's previous apparent violations of the very same laws in MD, though law enforcement officials have yet to hold him accountable, to date, for those previous offenses.

Documents and other material produced by CNN today suggest that O'Keefe secretly, and illegally, taped phone calls he had with CNN's investigative journalist Abbie Boudreau, and conspired to secretly video tape her in a compromising situation, also in violation of MD law.

O'Keefe, who is currently on probation after pleading guilty to a federal misdemeanor following another botched scheme in Louisiana earlier this year, seems to have broken similar laws last year in a number of states, including Maryland, where he secretly video taped employees at the offices of the community organization ACORN in Baltimore. Despite requests to MD law enforcement by a non-profit watchdog organization for a criminal investigation into the previous apparent violations of the state's felony wiretap laws --- and despite recognition of the "possible" violation of those laws in a number of law enforcement investigations elsewhere --- no action has been taken to date by state officials...

On Saturday, Arthur S. Brisbane, the New York Times' new Public Editor, filed his debut column. He takes his difficult post following the reign of the former Public Editor Clark Hoyt, the disastrous 'weasel' (cartoonist Tom Tomorrow's infamous depiction, not ours, though we have no quibble) whose contract ended last June.

In the first column of his new thankless role, Brisbane mentions among others, as part of his description of the Times' "substantial infrastructure for responding to public complaints," Senior Editor/Standards Greg Brock. Readers of The BRAD BLOG will remember Brock for helping to kick off what became a 70-some part series here on the "paper of record's" horrendously damaging and inaccurate coverage of Andrew Breitbart, James O'Keefe, and Hannah Giles' ACORN "Pimp" Hoax.

Brock, as some of you will recall, had responded to a reader's request for correction on a number of stories in which the Times had misreported that O'Keefe had dressed as, and represented himself as a "pimp" in the offices of ACORN, even though, as we reported repeatedly beginning early this year, he never had, as first based on the information in the independent report that had come out several months earlier from former Massachusetts Attorney General, Scott Harshbarger. Though the paper had reported on the "pimp" scam in a number of articles, they had never so much as even mentioned the Harshbarger report [PDF] which accurately stated that O'Keefe never dressed in the "outlandish" outfit the Times (and other media outlets) had reported him as wearing while interviewing ACORN workers.

Worse, the paper continued to misreport that point long after Harshbarger had disabused the world of that notion, by noting clearly that "at each and every" ACORN office visited by O'Keefe with his partner Hannah Giles (who was dressed as a "prostitute") he was "dressed like a college student - in slacks and a button down shirt" and even though ACORN had stated on the record, based on interviews with their employees who were there, that "O'Keefe was not wearting that absurd costume when he visited our offices."

The Times' inaccurate reporting directly preceded the passage of federal legislation which was passed overwhelmingly by the Democratic-majority Congress and signed by the President to defund the four-decade old, anti-poverty, pro-democracy community organization, even though it was all a hoax. O'Keefe had never dressed as a pimp --- or even represented himself as one --- but merely edited his videos to appear that way, as acknowledged in at least three subsequent official reports. Nonetheless, lazy coverage in the NYT had bought it all, and reported it all, hook, line, and unverified sinker...

A number of noteworthy news items occurred yesterday while I was on the hot, hot, hot Midwestern road for the entirety of the day. These are several among those items...

Greene Indicted on Obscenity Charges

South Carolina's mystery Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate (the one whose election "victory" is only explicable through malfeasance or malfunction of the 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting systems) was indicted on obsenity charges yesterday. One of the charges was an "extremely rare" felony count. The state Democratic Party chairwoman, Carol Fowler --- the one who presided over the 5-hour Executive Board protest hearing by Greene's primary opponent Judge Vic Rawl who argued that voting machine failure was the only explanation for the unknown, jobless, money-less, campaign-less Greene having "won" --- has asked him, again, to voluntarily step down from the nomination. When asked if he'd be willing to accept the nomination if Greene steps down, Rawl has told The BRAD BLOG previously that he'd cross that bridge when/if he came to it.

Appelate Court Backs Congressional Defunding of ACORN

A 3-judge panel (two Rs, 1 D) on the 2nd District Court of Appeals has unanimously reversed [PDF] the ruling of a federal district court judge last March concerning the Congressional defunding of ACORN in light of deceptively-edited video tapes published by Rightwing propagandists Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe. The appellate court determined that Congress can target a specific group for punishment, despite what the district court judge had identified as an unconstitutional Bill of Attainder in light of the government having "offered no...unique reason to treat ACORN differently from other contractors accused of serious misconduct." U.S. District Court Judge Nina Gershon had previously granted injunctive relief to the four-decade old community organization after finding they were barred "from federal funding without either a judicial trial or an administrative process applicable to all government contractors." The 3-judge appellate panel disagreed. ACORN's legal representation has called the decision "deeply flawed," says they are planning to ask the full court for reconsideration, and added "We cannot let Congress act like judge, jury and executioner without any hearings at all."

O'Keefe Accidentally Admits to Being Immoral

And speaking of ACORN, the Rightwing dirty trickster and federal criminal James O'Keefe who hacked together secretly-taped videos in order to phony up the idea that the anit-poverty, pro-democracy community group was committing some sort of crimes, has, according to Think Progress, admitted during a recent speech that what he does is "the nadir of morality." ("Nadir" means "lowest point", versus "zenith" which means "highest".) No worries though. O'Keefe's employer, the discredited, pathological liar Andrew Breitbart, has plans to deceptively re-edit the video of O'Keefe in order to "fix" that little Freudian slip.

Stephanie Comes Out!

Finally, the most fun news of the day comes from progressive radio talker and friend of The BRAD BLOG, Stephanie Miller. During a moving program yesterday, Miller announced to listeners that she was gay, noting that it's been an "open secret" among close friends and family for years, but that a "perfect storm" of events (the recent federal court ruling that CA's Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and the fight to repeal the federal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in the military, etc.) led her to the belief that it was the right moment to come out to her listeners and the public. The BRAD BLOG sends our props and kudos to Stephanie for her courageous decision. The audio of her "coming out" segment, follows below...

We missed this originally on Monday while on the road (where we still are, driving through the blistering hot TX panhandle today, God save us), but it's still worth watching today in case you missed it. Looks like Obama needs to fire Hillary Clinton, according to Colbert, just as Obama fired Shirley Sherrod and just as he signed legislation defunding ACORN --- in both cases, for having done nothing wrong.

However, it's been about ten months since Obama signed legislation defunding ACORN --- with hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs outrageously sacrificed in the bargain --- after Rightwing shyster Andrew Breitbart published deceptively-edited videos targeting them. Deceptively edited videos, I should add, in which the only criminal activities shown were those by Breitbart's employees who secretly video taped ACORN workers in violation of the law in several states.

And yet, there has still been no apology by Obama to ACORN, no funding restored, and very few of those in the media who (appropriately) chided Obama for having prematurely forced Sherrod to resign without learning the facts of the case have bothered to do same in regard to ACORN, even though it was the same scam, run by the very same pimp.

Is it because the MSM are too lazy? Too stupid? Or too embarrassed because they too fell for the ACORN "Pimp" Hoax and have yet to apologize for having done so?

Either way, The BRAD BLOG does not intend to let Obama off the hook, and I hope you'll join us in that effort.

Ousted Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod said Thursday she will sue a conservative blogger who posted an edited video of her making racially tinged remarks last week.

The edited video posted by Andrew Breitbart led Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to ask Sherrod to resign, a decision he reconsidered after seeing the entire video of her March speech to a local NAACP group. In the full speech, Sherrod spoke of racial reconciliation and lessons she learned after initially hesitating to help a white farmer save his home.

She said she doesn't want an apology from Breitbart for posting the video that took her comments out of context, but told a crowd at the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention that she would "definitely sue."

The suit against O'Keefe and Giles, filed just over two weeks ago by former San Diego ACORN worker Juan Carlos Vera for invasion of privacy, leaves open the possibility that a number of other defendants will be added to the complaint. As The BRAD BLOG noted in our coverage of that suit, "we'll be neither surprised nor saddened to see Breitbart named as one" of the defendants added in the not-too-distant future.

Between that lawsuit, and Sherrod's, if she keeps her promise to "definitely sue," it looks like Breitbart, who has spent many years disingenuously decrying the "journalistic malpractice" of others, may soon get a better definition of what that phrase actually means. For those of us who have seen Breitbart's manic and embarrassing defense of his phony ACORN "Pimp" Hoax videos --- the deceptively-edited tapes he published prior to the deceptively-edited Sherrod video he published --- we've already got a pretty good idea of what that looks like.

"Right-wing activist Andrew Breitbart has admitted --- on tape --- that he's a terrorist-lover. So why isn't the media covering it?," they ask, getting their priorities right for the first time in a long time, and adding the option to "Sign our petition demanding that the media cover this shocking new revelation."

"We've just uncovered a video in which Andrew Breitbart admits he 'hearts' terrorists while a conservative audience applauds," explain the progressive journalists at MoveOn*.

"Is this video real? Hey, video can't lie, right? Just ask CBS, The Washington Post, Fox, and other news outlets who've faithfully covered Andrew Breitbart's videos," says MoveOn, while failing to name the NYTimes specifically, despite the "paper of record's" egregious leadership in this same regard.

"Our video is just as truthful as any Breitbart has ever released, and deserves equal coverage from the news media," notes MoveOn, with no small bit of evidence to back up the assertion. Here's the damning video providing incontrovertible evidence of Breitbart's love for al-Qaeda:

* If James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Breitbart are "conservative journalists," as they and many in the non-wingnut media have reported, then yes, the folks at MoveOn are nothing other than "progressive journalists."

Yesterday The BRAD BLOG covered the invasion of privacy lawsuit filed by former San Diego ACORN worker Juan Carlos Vera against Rightwing activists and dirty tricksters James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles after they'd video-taped him secretly, in violation of California law.

Rightwing dirty-trickster and convicted federal criminal James O'Keefe and his accomplice Hannah Giles are being sued for invasion of privacy by a San Diego ACORN worker.

Juan Carlos Vera was fired by the 4-decade old anti-poverty, pro-democracy community organization after deceptively edited and secretly recorded video tapes of a meeting Vera had with O'Keefe and Giles were released by the pair and published on Republican propagandist Andrew Breitbart's websites. The tapes were then widely aired on Fox "News", as well as non-Rightwing media outlets.

Vera is suing for at least $75,000 in accordance with California's Invasion of Privacy Act which, according to the short, four-page complaint [PDF] filed at week's end in U.S. District Court, "prohibits the recording of confidential communications without the consent of all participants where there is an objectively reasonable expectation that the conversation is not being overheard or recorded."

In April of this year, CA Attorney General Jerry Brown completed a five-month probe into O'Keefe/Giles/Breitbart's secretly-taped ACORN videos and found "no criminality" by any of the ACORN workers seen on what he described as "severely edited" tapes.

He did, however, find that O'Keefe and Giles themselves were likely to have violated California law, and could see private litigation brought against them...

New York Times' woeful Public Editor/apologist Clark Hoyt ends his three-year term at the "paper of record" today with a column in which he tries to shape his own legacy as their (supposed) "readers' representative." There are, however, some 400,000 low and middle-income families across this nation, struggling to fight off, or emerge from, poverty who would might prefer to remember Hoyt by Tom Tomorrow's recent immortalization instead:

Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel today notes that Hoyt's farewell column reads as a dubious list of how the NYTimes, during his tenure, continued to show its propensity for serving as a mouthpiece for GOP oppo-research teams and dirty tricksters.

She also observes, as we did, that Hoyt succeeded in ignoring altogether --- "to his significant discredit" --- one of the most insidious and weasel-like failings of both the paper and Hoyt himself during his tenure: their dubious role as dupes and/or useful mouthpieces for the phony, yet terribly destructive, rightwing ACORN 'Pimp' Hoax scam"...

Once again, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show demonstrate the best news writing in the business. Hands down. Period. No contest.

Last night, Maddow opened with a shameful side-by-side comparison of the aggressive action taken by Republicans last year to defund ACORN on the basis of secret video tapes which proved to be complete hoaxes, versus their nearly complete silence in regard to the deadly crimes and disasters of BP.

While ACORN received approximately $3.5 million in federal funding over each of the last 15 years, and Republicans were outraged about it, BP receives literally BILLIONS in federal funds each year for what it does, and it has actually killed people in the bargain.

Maddow's report is both stunning and obvious at the same time --- at least to anyone remotely involved in the world of actual fact and reality, which is to say, almost nobody else in the entirety of the corporate media (and, thus, the public.)

This report is what the news media are supposed to be doing --- connecting the dots that matter for the public. This is a MUST-WATCH and a MUST-SHARE (widely)...